James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

Google has just announced that as of right now, they have ceased providing a specially filtered search service for the Chinese mainland, rather they are redirecting each request for google.cn to google.com.hk, where the requirement for filtering doesn't exist (AFAIK).

This is a big step for Google and it's going to have repercussions for other nations that seek to censor their internet feeds, such as Australia.

Think about it. If Google is ready to ditch a 35% share of the search market in China over filtering, the chance that they are going to meekly follow government directives in other, smaller markets is quite small, especially if all they need to do is redirect users to other search facilities in nations with more open internet regimes.

This should give Conroy and Co pause for thought. They've already admitted that their plan isn't actually going to be useful by any meaningful measure (it won't reduce the distribution of child pornography, it is trivially circumventable and there is massive public disquiet over the concept of a hidden list of sites and urls). Having Google (the company that everyone goes to for search) turn around and say "ya boo sucks to you" is just going to leave a whole heap more egg on the face.

You may not be a fan of Google, and they certainly didn't win any friends when they announced that they were going to censor the feed into china, this move is certainly a step in the right direction back towards the "Don't be evil" ideal that is often attributed to them.

[UPDATE]

The government has released the submissions into its consultation on "measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material".

You know something, there are a lot of us working to try and educate and inform our family, friends and communities about the dangers and inadequacies of the proposed mandatory ISP filtering scheme. We're actually talking to people, explaining the issues as they stand and answering questions.

We're also trying to get the media to move away from the over-simplistic "It's all about the Child Porn" angle to look at the real problems with the scheme.

All that work however is being hampered by the kind of activities conducted today by a group of people calling themselves Anonymous. In their wisdom, they decided that they needed to take more direct action. So, in the spirit of attacking censorship on the internet they declared they would be attempting a Denial of Service attack on a number of Government web sites, and at the same time conducting a "blackfax" campaign and other activities of a similar type against various Government offices.

In essence they were going to declare to the Australian government that any attempt to bring regulation  to the internet would be met with attacks on government infrastructure. 

This sort of short sighted ill thought out protest annoys me on a couple of levels. Firstly it cuts the ground out from under those of us who have been working for a long time to try and change this policy. By acting in such an irresponsible manner, Anonymous has given the media a sensational angle which has and will be used to counter the more cogent and reasoned arguments against the filter. Now, along side the infamous "If you're against the filter you must be for Child Porn" we'll have "Opponents against the filter are evil hackers only concerned with getting access to porn".

Okay here's a first draft of the letter I'm planning on sending to my local member:

I am writing to you concerning the proposed introduction of a mandatory ISP filtering scheme by the Australian Federal Government.

I have several concerns regarding this scheme, both as an adult and as a parent.

Firstly, while the report released by Senator Conroy on the effectiveness of the Live ISP Filtering trial indicates “!00% Accuracy” with little to no network impact, it also highlights several glaring problems with the Filtering scheme which to my mind render it essentially useless as a tool to prevent the consumption of RC material.

These range from simply changing which servers your computer uses to find out the addresses of web sites, to the utilisation of common technologies which are free and are used every day by hundreds of thousands of people in the course of their work. The report also points out that the filtering scheme cannot filter either chat rooms or peer to peer software.

This leads me to question the validity of spending the proposed $180 million dollars on a scheme which is so full of holes. Would education of parents not be the better option when it comes to protecting children from the dark side of the internet.